Julie & Julia

Julie & Julia works as a relationship comedy more than as a food movie. If you're thinking this biopic of Julia Child (a hammy if not outright randy Meryl Streep) and an unrequited protege Julie Powell (Amy Adams in cute mode) is any kind of Big Night the closest you'll get is Stanley Tucci (playing Child's salty husband).
The two females never actually meet but their film time is intercut back and forth as we watch Child learn to be a cook at prestigious cooking schools in France (where hubby works as a diplomat) while modern day (2002) Julie works in Gotham handling 9/11 insurance claims by day and in her spare time blogging about cooking every single recipe is Childs pivotal cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking. The movie also uses Child's autobiography My Life in France and Powell's subsequent book Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen, which also aptly describes the Adams stretches of the movie.
The key ingredients that makes this film work are contrasts of the women's lifestyles (apartment furnishings, circle of friends) and their partner's loving support rather than ridicule that suggests writer/director Nora Ephron is at least trying to play beyond the meet cute romcom plots that otherwise hold back similar films from fruition. Using "Psycho Killer" during the lobster sequence actually works. Also clever is the way Streep has been framed and shot to indicate Child's 6'2" height. Streep towers over Tucci in many scenes and when her sister (Jane Lynch) arrives for a visit she too is a tall tree surrounded by a small forest of less interesting people.